Paul Ryan and the Dreamers

Any deal to protect the Dreamers from deportation may ultimately come down to Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House.CreditCreditMark Wilson/Getty Images

This article is part of the Opinion Today newsletter. You can sign up here to receive the newsletter each weekday.

The Senate began debating the future of the Dreamers last night, a debate that’s scheduled to continue through this week. As it does, don’t lose sight of who’s making the most important decisions here: Republican leaders.

Although the debate is starting in the Senate — and Democrats will play a central role in it — a Senate deal wouldn’t be enough. “It’s really hard to imagine ... a Senate-passed bill passing the House,” Vox’s Dara Lind writes.

Why not? The House has many Republicans who don’t want an immigration deal, because they don’t want to protect the Dreamers from deportation. Democrats are virtually unanimous in wanting to protect the Dreamers, but Democrats don’t control the White House or Congress.

In the end, Paul Ryan, the House speaker, may have the biggest decision to make. Any bill that might pass the Senate would likely have the support of a majority of House members — a mix of Democrats and less conservative Republicans. But as speaker, Ryan has the power to block any bill from coming to a vote. And he may use that power if most House Republicans oppose a bill.

“When it comes to the dreamers,” E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post writes, “their fate depends almost entirely on Ryan.” (I’d add that President Trump matters too, because he could likely influence Ryan and some other House Republicans.)

Far too much of the Dreamer discussion has centered on whether Democrats are going to stand tough. That’s not the issue here. Republicans control the government, and they will almost certainly decide whether a bill can pass.

Chicago school progress. Some of the most impressive educational gains in the country have been happening in Chicago. Students — of all races — have made striking progress in reading and math. They’re spending more time studying the arts. High-school graduation rates are up.

Chicago still has a long way to go. Its math and reading scores remain below the national average, for example. But its recent progress is exciting, especially given the city’s diverse population and relatively high poverty rate.

In The Washington Post last week, Karin Chenoweth wrote, “If we as a country are really serious about wanting to improve schools and education, we should be studying Chicago.”

The gains haven’t come easily, though. They have involved, among other things, greater accountability for school leaders and the closure of some underperforming schools. In a Times op-ed today, Tamar Manasseh makes the case against the next round of Chicago’s school closures, calling previous ones “a fiasco.”

I disagree. For too long, school systems have been unwilling to crack down on failing schools. As traumatic as closures can be, they can lead to real progress, as has happened in Chicago. In most other parts of society, after all, institutions aren’t allowed to fail year after year, without consequence.

Follow up. Lucas Dolan of American University responded to my column about Trumpism-for-thee-and-not-for-me by noting on Twitter that populist demagogues in other countries have followed a similar pattern. They’ve exempted their own supporters from their policy agenda.

In a follow-up email exchange, Dolan credited the political scientists Kurt Weyland and Jan-Werner Müller with introducing the term “discriminatory legalism.” They used it to describe the actions of demagogues like Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who use the law to punish political opponents and give benefits to supporters.

These populist leaders, Dolan wrote, “employ discriminatory legalism openly, seemingly with a clear conscience, and without significant political cost.” They can do so because of “the particular moral universe imaged by populists — whereby an ethically pure ‘people’ opposes an inherently corrupt elite,” which “provides political cover for these actions.”

I’m not trying to suggest that Trump is the equivalent of Chávez, who was far, far worse. But Trump is certainly using some of the cynical, damaging tools of demagogues.